Be afraid, ladies, be very afraid.
What happened to the women’s movement? In the aftermath of the recent Rush Limbaugh Slut-gate, coupled with the queasy-stomach inducing Rick Santorum rhetoric about contraception, I am harkened back to the Salem Witch Trials. How can you allow Gross Baboons like Sanotrum and Limbaugh make hay? Surely you learned about those days, before Gloria Steinem made it OK for women to have an opinion and Helen Gurley Brown cleared the path to having an orgasm. It was before Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, which was around the time when burning the bra replaced shopping for them. Wasn’t this incredible time all about honoring the valiant efforts of the Suffragettes and moving women’s rights forward?
Having been raised by all women, and being coherent in the early 70’s (it ends there), I witnessed the women’s movement evolve as together they broke ceilings (just not the glass one yet, it’s just cracked), and demanded (and are still demanding) equal pay, access to the boardroom, it was an exciting time for women. With the Southern states and their statesmen (and I use that term loosely here) sounding like Cotton Mather in 1692, where are the hordes of women demanding this dangerous rhetoric be squashed? Remember the expression, if you give them a finger, they will take your arm. The apathy of our generation is palpable and depressing. We were nowhere in protest for the War in Iraq and are nowhere to be found in the streets regarding the extended War in Afghanistan. Sure, we were clumped in small groups in protest to Wall Street but that ended up being a smelly mess and the refusal to coalesce around one talking point diminished the end game. Ladies, you are your only hope to stand up in the streets and demand that this backwards conversation stops. Has everyone become so complacent with our iPads and tech savvy-ness that doing something meaningful does not matter anymore? Has the word legacy become a faux pas?
